


kitchen iron never dulls

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Blindness, F/M, Growing Old, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 21:43:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7331641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten things Beryl Patmore learns after retirement and the one thing she never knows.</p><p> </p><p>I-<em> When the time comes Mr. Bates gives her a cane. She and Elsie walk arm in arm with her through the garden, come wind or sun, and Daisy never changes anything from its place in the kitchen. It is not the same. Some things only sight does justice to. </em></p><p>  <em>And yet. Some things don't need to be seen at all.<em></em></em></p>
            </blockquote>





	kitchen iron never dulls

I- When the time comes Mr. Bates gives her a cane. From a good sellsman, not that dishonest Farrel from the village with his funny inventions. She and Elsie walk arm in arm with her through the garden, come wind or sun, and Daisy never changes anything from its place in the kitchen. It is nit the same. Some things only sight does justice to, she thinks. And yet. Some things don't need to be seen at all.

II- The Carsons -and how odd to think of them like that!- come by everyday, they are neighbors after all. Elsie sits with her in her hotel and they talk the hours away while the maids scurry around. There's no time to reminiscence; just enough to laugh at the god awful soufflé abominations the girls come up with.

It is good to be mistress of her own bed and breakfast, and thought she cannot see the place she can hear, and her memory doesn't wane: she has the maids in a tight leash and the cook welcomes her sharp tongued comments. Daisy is her best pupil and dearest girl, and they are all so very fond of her. Of her cooking too. Beryl admits, proudly and grudgingly, that she never adds too much salt and just enough pepper. 

III- Mr. Mason speaks of his son late into the night and Beryl exchanges stories about her own kitchen girls, and they are happy, rested. She can sleep till noon if she wants to, thought she'd hardly do it.

She tells him she'd always wanted an herb garden all of her own. The day after the doctor confirmed her sickness is in its final stages, he surprises her with a cart full of seeds and plantlings.

IV- When her sight had still to desert her, she would cook up a storm in the Mason's small kitchen, equipped decently as a wedding present from groom to bride. Mrs. Patmore liked a man with good priorities and George is very sensible, very kind. Wickedly funny, his impression of the Dowager Countess makes her giggle even when she's too blind to see the funny faces and gestures. The clash and cling and fit together, somehow, in the clumsy way of lonely, independent people.

V- She lives to meet little Charlie. Charles William, but that's a weighty name. Carson cries more than the babe, and for that sight alone she's glad her eyes work for now.

She cries too, but nobody's bound to notice with Daisy crowing over her babe and complaining she's hurting and Andy fainting all over the place. Honestly, that lad.

VI- She still cooks after she looses her sight. George helps her. There are, she is sure, worse ways to go about old age and blindness. There are certainly no better ways to wreck a kitchen, but she's not the one cleaning.

VII- Every other week she presses her swollen hands in Charlie's little face and has Daisy describe her son to her, time and again, so that she could recite it in her sleep: her mother's high forehead, Mr. Mason's nose and Andy's smile and fine blond hair.

VIII- Mrs. Patmore, Mason on paper but Patmore to everyone, falls asleep one night mid complaining about the moles butchering the garden. Her husband kisses her forehead and closes the light only he uses, and she is warm when he falls asleep beside her. In the morning it will be different, but he doesn't know it then, and she's too busy snoring.

IX- Widowers always fall prey to comparison, she's under no illusions about that. But Mr. Mason understands that he's compared to Downton as well, and they go on sniping at each other. Honestly, the way that man flirts it's a wonder he stayed alone so long.

She's not complaining, but never mind that.

X- Her husband helps her build the garden. They sow the seeds in their plots, each one memorized. When spring comes, she likes to rub her hands in the leaves and smell the herbs. In the summer she cooks apple pies and seasoned chicken and stuffed pheasant. She cooks like it is the last time. It isn't, she learns in time. It takes more than empty eyes and old age to take down Beryl Patmore Mason, mark her words. 

 

O-  Daisy will have a daughter next. Little Beryl will be a happy child, growing up with stories about the great dragon Patmore and the simmering fire she keeps alive, waiting to one day share a meal with a very lucky little girl.

One day, but not soon, not for a long time. 

 


End file.
